The company raised 9.4 million a year ago through a listing on the AIM stock exchange in London. Some of which was used to finance a manufacturing facility in North Carolina which has been given Nokia approval to manufacture replacement fascias.

Chairman John Pither said orders of 500000 were 227 per cent ahead of plan and that the company had won a licensing deal with Coca Cola to put the Coke brand on mobile phones and computer peripherals.

Comeleon says its Interactive Design Studio which allows consumers to upload images to the internet to be placed on to phone products and delivered to them has been adopted by Siemens and Virgin Mobiles websites.

Vodafone is offering customers free voicemail WAP access ringtones and graphics Footie on the Fone Vizzavi text alerts and the chance to try SMS Trivial Pursuit free for the month of January.

ICM interviewed a random selection of 1000 adults across the country by phone last week. Of these 66 per cent owned a mobile phone (with 43 per cent on pre-pay).

Only 80 of those interviewed thought PocketPhone Shop would give the most honest advice. Nine per cent thought PPS would offer the best choice.

Just six per cent thought PPS would have the best prices while 10 per cent thought PPS would have the most knowledgeable staff.

The Carphone Warehouse did better with 37 per cent of the sample saying CPW would offer honest advice. Widest choice earned 43 per cent of the vote best prices 30 per cent and the most knowledgeable staff 38 per cent.

Supermarkets were not particularly trusted with just 14 per cent of those interviewed thinking supermarkets would offer honest advice.

Only 11 per cent thought supermarkets offered the widest choice but 26 per cent of the sample thought supermarkets offered the best prices.

Judges selected so far are:

Mike McComb (Mobile Phone Store founder) Alan Haddon (GSM Suppliers Association) Antonella Esteves (Arc Group) Phil Rider (Digital Phone Company) Jacqui Brookes (Federation of Communications Services) John Strand (Strand Consultants) John Berle (Federation of Communications Services) Amanda Fisher (ex-Motorola) and Carl Hamilton (Total Romtec).

Awards categories will be judged for the best Customer Service Small Dealer/Retailer Large Dealer/Retailer Technological Advance Distributor (Handsets) Distributor (Accessories) Manufacturer Service and Repair Service Provider Advertising/Marketing PR campaign (National) Advertising/Marketing PR campaign (local) Innovative Product Innovative Service and Innovative Service (Mobile Internet).

The Mobile News Awards 2002 will be presented at the London Hilton on Park Lane on March 6.

More than 1200 people have booked places at the black-tie dinner dance.

Entries should be sent to:

Mobile News Awards. Clark White Publications 134 Petherton Road Highbury London N5 2RT by January 25 2002 accompanied by the 50 (plus VAT) entry fee per category.

Vodafone CEO Sir Chris Gent was voted Britains business leader of the year in a poll of Sunday Telegraph readers

About 300 pieces of music including songs by Nirvana and soundtracks to Titanic and The X-Files will no longer be available to download as ringtones after a list was sent to ringtone vendors by EMIs music publishing arm.

The record company says it is acting on behalf of artists and composers who dont wish to have their compositions converted into ringtones.

Ringtones.co.uk director Andy Mills believes that the decision is due to the poor quality cash-in ringtone versions of songs that bear little resemblance to the original.

A number of ringtone vendors dont take the trouble to even try and replicate the original music in their tones they simply lash it up and put the title on their websites. In effect theyre taking advantage of peoples desire to sell very substandard cover versions of the songs rather like the cheap Top of the Pops albums available from high street retailers in the 1970s said Mills.

Its a minority of vendors cashing in on this booming market that causes problems for credible content providers. The same happened earlier this year over payment of publishing royalties for ringtones sold. Theres always a minority that tarnishes the image of the sector. We rate all of the ringtones available from our website on a 5-star basis according to how well it interprets the tune.

James Winsoar of Phat Tonez which claims to be the first company to commercially sell ringtones said:

Ringtone companies currently pay music companies as much as 10 per cent from the sale of each ringtone in royalties.

It appears that EMI plans to put ringtone companies out of business so it can create just one ringtone business that it owns.

This will mean cutting off the supply of royalty fees to individual musicians who originally created the music.

The only reason behind this must be to create a ringtone monopoly and thereby force people to purchase ringtones at an inflated price from just one corporation. I will be urging the European Union to investigate this decision to ensure that such a monopoly or price cartel cannot be created. Imagine the uproar if a record company refused to supply music to a record store like HMV. This is the same thing claimed Winsoar.

The mobile ringtones market has grown from 2.5 million in the UK to 30 million this year and is expected to hit 50 million in 2002. Winsoar says the market is growing rapidly and expects to deliver content to over two million handsets by April 2002.

The company says it reduced its operating losses by 2.7 per cent to 10.8 million.

Business sales from voice and data services were up 72 per cent to 50.8 million.

We expect losses to continue reducing as contributions feed through from high revenues and increased value-added sales said Your Communications managing director Hugh Logan.

Your Communications was formed by the amalgamation of Norweb and Sheffield-based service provider Intercell.

The company was hit earlier this year when two dealers were alleged to have master-minded a massive scam collecting commissions for unactivated phones.

The Intercell dealers were in the Nottingham area (Mobile News May 14).

Knight left the network three weeks ago after eight years of service for personal reasons.

Burns joined BTCellnet in February as a director reporting to Knight with the specific task of integrating the three retail businesses of Mobile Phone Store DX and BTCellnet and to launch the rebranding of stores.

Prior to joining BTCellnet he was a senior consultant at Arthur Andersen specialising in retail in the UK Europe and the US.

Before that he had 15 years of senior retail experience with Kingfisher and Arcadia.

Knight was formerly MD of BTCellnet-owned MPS and headed up Lumina the reincarnated Martin Dawes operation acquired by BTCellnet.

Japanese mobile phone manufacturers Kenwood Panasonic Sanyo and Sony are already using the system. Other licensees include Ericsson Motorola and Nokia.

Symbian OS has already been licensed to mobile phone manufacturers representing over 70 per cent of the mobile phone market said Hiromi Nishi president of Symbian Japan.

Symbian allows manufacturers to market data-enabled mobile phones that can run third-party applications content and services.

Symbians technology will enable us to deliver a range of feature-rich mobile phones for next-generation networks said Kazuyuki Tomita general manager of the 3G mobile phones division at Fujitsu.